1. R. A. Knox, Some Loose Stones, p. 89.

2. A friend of mine performed the surprising feat of evolving an entire system—god, religion, worshippers and all—out of much less than four legs and a tail. His only material consisted of a word, half-obsolete, of uncertain derivation and meaning. The jaw-bone in the hands of Samson was as nothing compared with the magic of this word in the mind of the valiant expositor of prehistoric religions. While reading the paper in which he proclaimed his discovery to a learned society, one could not fail to note the profound impression which it made upon the hearers or to admire the transparent sincerity of the reader.

It will not surprise those who read this book to learn that its author spent some portion of the wakeful night which followed the reading of the paper in the composition of a simple liturgy to crown his friend’s achievement.

3. R. A. Courtney, The Hill and the Circle, p. 15.

4. Between the years 1854 and 1930, inclusive, Little Easter occurs once—on the 2nd of May, 1886.

5. Quoted in the Parochial History of Cornwall, iii., 175.

6. The Celtic controversy respecting the incidence of the Christian Passover was concerned solely with astronomical calculations and has, of course, no bearing upon the matter here under discussion.

7. Buttel-Reepen, Man and His Forerunners, pp. 72-3.

8. The Armenians still keep the Nativity on the 6th of January.

9. The subject is fully dealt with by Neander; Church History (Bohn’s ed.), vol. ii., pp. 419-48.

10. He would be led so to argue by reflecting that in the Church’s Kalendar Ascension and Pentecost are similarly related to the Paschal Feast and Annunciation to Christmas.

11. A still earlier age, the eolithic, which in Sussex has supplied my school contemporary, Dr. A. Smith Woodward of the British Museum, with what he believes to be a link between man and his pre-human ancestor is not represented in Cornwall.

12. Geology of the Land’s End District, pp. 79-80.

13. “Le prÉtendu caractÈre phallique de quelques-uns de ces monuments n’est qu’une conjecture chimÉrique qui a permis À certains esprits imaginatifs de se donner carriÈre.” DÉchelette, Manuel d’ArchÉologie, I, 431, n. 2.

14. W. C. Borlase, NÆnia CornubiÆ, p. 99:

“Wishing to put beyond dispute the origin and purpose of some few at least of these monoliths, and to ascertain if any were indeed sepulchral, the author ... examined the ground round some half-dozen of them.”

At the foot of a menhir at Pridden, St. Buryan, he found “a deposit of splinters of human bone.” At the foot of a menhir at Trelew, St. Buryan, he found “a deposit of splintered bones similar in quantity and appearance to that found at Pridden.” A precisely similar discovery was made at Trenuggo, Sancreed. Another at Tregonebris.

15. This is shown by the presence of bronze sickles in Ligurian graves and their absence in Iberian.

16. ArchÉologie: Age du Bronze, chap. xiii.

17. Quoted by DÉchelette, ArchÉologie, II, pp. 413, 567; by Lord Avebury, Prehistoric Times, p. 132; by D. Gougaud, ChrÉtientÉs, p. 13.

18. ArchÉologie, II, p. 30.

19. England before the Norman Conquest, p. 9.

20. Ezekiel, xxvii and xxviii.

21. Sir Hercules Read, Early Iron Age, p. 85.

22. Arch. Journal, viii, 8.

23. Age du Bronze, p. 29.

24. Oman, England before the Norman Conquest, p. 107.

25. Mr. Henry Jenner, F.S.A., to whom I am indebted for this statement, has reminded me that St. Michael’s Mount is given in the Life of St. Cadoc as Dinsul (Mons solis) and that Tregaseal in St. Just may be a compound of which seal=Zil=sol. Both are possible. Roman intercourse with the extreme west of Cornwall is proved by the Roman milestone at St. Hilary, which is within easy distance of both places.

26. Gougaud, ChrÉtientÉs, p. 22. The derivation of the word Druid is uncertain. There appears to be no doubt that the Druids practised a form of divination founded not on the flight but on the song of birds, that of the wren in particular. Dren is Irish for wren. From this some have inferred that Druid is derived from dren drui-Én. There is another Irish word drÚi (genitive druad) which meant a magician. Anwyl, Celtic Religion, p. 55.

27. Prof. Oman’s translation, England before the Norman Conquest, p. 74.

28. See, however, chap. iv.

29. D. Gougaud, ChrÉtientÉs, pp. 16, 17.

30. Edited by M. Fawtier (Paris, Champion, 5 Quai Malequais, 1912). The Latin text is given in the appendix to this book p. 169.

31. DÉchelette, ArchÉologie PrÉhistorique, p. 441.

32. Oman, England before the Norman Conquest, p. 30.

33. Anatole le Braz, La nuit des feux.

34. Romans de la Table Ronde, p. 110.

35. The Roll was printed by the Royal Institution of Cornwall in 1887. Extracts from some of the later rolls are given by Mr. J. H. Matthews in his History of St. Ives, Lelant, Towednack and Zennor, pp. 133-42; and by Dr. W. J. Stephens in his Collections for a History of Crantock.

36. I am indebted to Professor Loth for the identification of these surnames.

37. Some further light would doubtless be thrown on the subject if the Camborne registers were searched for the children of the above marriages and for the burial of their parents. It is noteworthy that Carthew marriages were solemnised at Camborne in 1583 and 1588. They may have been, and probably were, those of John Carthowe’s children.

38. As late, however, as 1599 we meet with Bretons at Redruth, who contributed handsomely to the subsidy of that year. Six may be noted in the St. Ives district in 1571, but none in 1593 or after that date (Lay Subsidies, 87 (218)).

39. The trÈve is described by Dom Gougaud as a parochial subdivision still recognised in certain cantons of Brittany (ChrÉtientÉs, p. 124).

40. Loth’s Les Saints bretons, pp. 92, 93.

41. Peter, Old Cornish Drama, p. 34.

42. After the above was written, Mr. Thurstan Peter, President of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, announced that under the Ægis of that institution the Beunans Meriasek would be performed in the year 1915. The great war has necessarily caused the postponement of the enterprise.

43. Les Noms des Saints bretons, p. 143.

44. Loth, ibid., p. 124, n. 1.

45. Quoted by Dom Gougaud, Les ChrÉtientÉs celtiques, p. 82.

46. Gougaud, ibid., p. 107.

47. Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, etc., i, 201.

48. Ibid., i, 674 and 676.

49. Cornwall’s independence of Rome implied neither repudiation of nor secession from the Roman Church. It was merely the temporary suspension of outward communion with Latin Christianity as the result of political events which had placed Cornwall in a state of isolation.

50. The statement is based upon the assumption that the decrees of Pope Leo III were as inoperative in Cornwall as they were in Wales and Ireland. It should be needless to warn the reader against confounding Augustine of Canterbury with the bishop of Hippo. The latter is said to have sanctioned certain regulations for the religious life which subsequently became known as the rule of St. Augustine. In the beginning of the ninth century Pope Leo III made this rule obligatory upon all the clergy who had not embraced some other rule. Had the monks of St. Petrock been in outward communion with western Christendom they would probably have become canons, regular or secular, of St. Augustine and, in that case and in that sense only, Sir John Maclean’s statement might have been excusable. But in that sense the words had no meaning in the sixth century when St. Petrock founded the Cornish community. Augustine of Canterbury was a Benedictine monk and the canons regular introduced by Bishop Warelwast, known as Black Canons, belonged to one of the three great orders which sprang from the rule attributed to his great namesake the bishop of Hippo.

51. Dom Gougaud speaks of them as ÉvÊques dÉclassÉs et errants (ChrÉtientÉs, p. 219).

52. Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, I, 124.

53. Gougaud, ChrÉtientÉs, p. 67.

54. To this period Mr. Jenner would also assign the dwellings at Chysauster which may indeed, as he suggests, have been St. Gulval’s nunnery.

55. Stokes, Ireland and the Celtic Church, p. 347.

56. Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, I, 675.

57. Ibid., I, 676.

58. It is even possible that Coelling may be Callestock in Perranzabuloe. The canons of Exeter had lands in that parish in the twelfth century.

59. Ezra VII; Nehemiah XII.

60. Donan, however, is a Celtic name (see Loth, Rev. Celt., XXIX, 277). For the purpose of the argument which is here put forward it would have been more convenient to have distinguished between them.

61. Councils, I, 979.

62. In the West of Cornwall there are indications in Domesday Book (1086) of the recent introduction of Saxon place-names, e.g. in Edward the Confessor’s time it can hardly be a coincidence that Aluuarton (hodie Alverton) was the holding of Aluuar.

63. Inventory of Bp. Grandisson.

64. Exeter Episc. Registers, Stapeldon, p. 97.

65. Feudal Aids 1303, 1306, 1346.

66. Episc. Reg. Bronescombe, App. p. 473.

67. St. Petrock’s hundred had, of course, no connection with Rielton or Rillaton, subsequently known as the hundred of East. The confusion may have arisen from the fact that the bailiwick of Pydar was at Rialton, and that of East at Rillaton, formerly Rielton.

68. Patent Roll, 3 William and Mary.

69. See Monastery-Bishoprics, supra.

70. The Patent Roll of 7 Richard II (cf. also Monasticon, edited by Oliver, p. 4) should be compared with the Patent Roll of 9 Richard II. The former states that Cnut was the founder of the priory of St. German, while the latter states that Leofric was the founder. Inasmuch as the charter of Cnut required the land of Landrake to be given after Burhwold’s death to St. German for the good of the souls of Cnut and Burhwold (Terram ... commendat ... Sancto Germano) it follows that both statements were (and were probably understood to be) legal fictions. The earlier document, however, confirms, if confirmation were needed, the evidence as to the reconstruction of the monastery by Leofric as given in Domesday Book, though it is not necessarily conclusive as to the substitution of regular for secular canons. Preb. Hingeston Randolph (Architec. Hist. of St. Germans, p. 31) states that “there is no reason to suppose that Leofric took any steps to found a priory at St. Germans.” The statement is far too sweeping. On the other hand, Mr. Haddan (Councils, etc., I, 704) relies upon the ipsissima verba of the Patent Roll for one of his main arguments for a single Cornish see in the days of Cnut. By itself the evidence supplied by an early patent roll relating to a transaction which took place nearly four centuries previously is not conclusive, especially when, as in this case, a legal title was needed in order to settle a dispute, and to place a bishop in undisputed possession of an advowson.

71. There is a temptation to identify Lanisley with the Lannaledensis of the Missa S. Germani (Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, etc., I, 696). Alet, or Aleth, and Idles, in the parish of Kenwyn, are regarded as synonymous, if not identical, in several ancient charters. On the same principle Lanaleth would become Lanidles, a form sufficiently near that of Lanisle to convey the idea of identity. But Mr. Haddan is satisfied that Lanadleth is the British name of St. Germans, and the confusion introduced by the above supposition would be practically insurmountable.

72. Eglostudic (St. Tudy) and Polrode belonged to St. Petrock in the time of the Confessor, and Tinten may have been claimed for Exeter by virtue of the grant of 909.

73. At a much earlier date (670) St. Wilfrid claimed ecclesiastical endowments of the British for the Saxon Church in the neighbourhood of Ripon.

74. Loth, Les Noms des Saints bretons, p. 87.

75. Amaneth may be an English equivalent for Anmanach. Treveneage appears at Trevanek in 1284, and as Trevanaek in 1361.

76. Loth, Les Noms des Saints bretons, pp. 52, 53.

77. Hist. of English Law, i, 33.

78. The references are to Kilter’s rising in 1549, and to the prolonged defence of Little Dennis by Sir Richard Vyvyan in 1646.

79. The evidence is indirect. Trengwainton, to which the advowson was appendant, was itself a sub-manor of Roseworthy in Gwinear. Landithy is only a short distance from the church.

80. Romans de la Table ronde, p. 90.

81. To quote M. Loth, whose gentle irony would be spoiled by translation, in his answer to M. Fawtier’s criticism: “Il (M. Fawtier) a ÉtÉ Évidemment, d’avance, fÂcheusement impressionnÉ par le fait mÊme d’avoir affaire À un hagiographe et ce qui plus est, comme il l’avoue sans dÉtour À un hagiographe breton. Si nos hagiographes mÉritent une place d’honneur dans le martyrologe de la critique, c’est peut-Être bien que nos vies de saints sont d’une assez basse Époque: la vie de Samson mise À part, les deux plus anciennes ont ÉtÉ rÉdigÉes vers la fin du ix^e siÈcle.”

82. J. Loth, Revue Celtique, xxii, p. 96.

83. The text has been edited by M. Fawtier and published by MM. Champion (Paris). The reader should consult also the more critical notes on S. Samson de Dol, by Prof. Loth (Champion, Paris) and if possible a very illuminating little treatise, La vie de S. Samson, by M. L’AbbÉ Duine.

84. Loth, Saint Samson de Dol, p. 26.

85. See the previous footnote.

86. Inspeximi is a convenient plural of the word inspeximus (we have inspected). Royal grants of liberties and privileges are frequently based upon earlier grants which the Royal grantor declares he has inspected. The charters of these earlier grants in many instances no longer exist.

87. Jour. Arch. Assocn., XXXIX, 282.

88. Pat. Roll, 18 Edw. III, 1345.

89. Another honour is mentioned in the same record, viz. that of St. Cheus, which awaits identification. The Exeter book reads correctly that Tremar uustel is de honore S. Chei, whereas the Exchequer version has belongs ad honore S. Chei. This led General James to translate the words “belongs to the honours of Chei”: honore is probably an abbreviation for honorem and the full stop after the S a contraction of Sancti.

90. Monasticon, p. 72.

91. Loth, Les Noms des Saints bretons, p. 19.

92. Gasquet, English Monastic Life, p. 214.

93. Mr. Thurstan C. Peter has written an interesting and reliable account of Glasney Collegiate Church (Camborne, 1903).

94. Monasticon, p. 135.

95. Hermits and Anchorites of England, Methuen & Co.

96. Nancherrow and Carnyorth, two neighbouring hamlets in St. Just-in-Penwith, denote respectively the valley of the stag and the hill of the roebuck.

97. Leland, Collectanea, i, 75.

98. Loth, Les Noms des Saints bretons, p. 48.

99. Parochial History of Cornwall, Supplement, pp. 102, 110.

100. The name of Neot’s predecessor, like that of Veronica, may have been suggested to Asser by the reputed miracle; but, if so, it would not invalidate the truth of the narrative so far as it relates to the successive founders of the church.

101. Colemanshegg is probably Kelmonseg (1308)=Kilmonseg (1332)=Kilmonsek (1427)=Kyllymansak (1442)=Calamansack (hodie), in Constantine parish, which in the eleventh century was embraced in the forest of Morrois.

102. Inq. p.m., 28 Edw. I, 44 (4).

103. Calendar of Close Rolls, 20 May, 1301, p. 488.

104. Pat. R., 13 Edw. III, 1339.

105. Ibid., 9 Edw. II, 1316.

106. Ibid., 1 Rich. II, 1378, and Reg. Brantyngham, p. 387.

107. Pat. R., 3 Edw. VI, 1549.

108. Hermit (Gr. Eremites, L. Heremita), one who lives in the desert; Anchorite (Gr. Anachoretes, L. Anchorita), one withdrawn from the world; Monk (Gr. Monachos, L. Monachus), one who dwells alone. The difference between a hermit and an anchorite was that the former was free to move from place to place, the latter was confined. The monk who had at first been a solitary soon became a member of an ordered and celibate community.

It is curious to notice that the impulse which created the hermit produced the monastery, and that, at a later date, the monastery incidentally produced the hermit.

109. Register Stafford, pp. 25, 251, 294.

110. Ibid., p. 391.

111. Ibid., pp. 25, 294.

112. ArchÆologia, LIX (2), 281 et seq.

113. Cott. MS. Vesp. A. XIV.

114. The name survived until the Cornish language was obsolete. Boson (1702) uses it.

115. See dispensation granted by Thomas (Cranmer) to John Arscott, archpriest of St. Michael de Monte Tumba Exoniensis diocesis (Monasticon, p. 30).

116. The statue of the Blessed Virgin in the parish church of Mont St. Michel, known as the black virgin, also bears the name of Notre Dame de Mont Tombe and the small island in the bay about two miles from Mont St. Michel is called Tombelaine. Tumba (twmp in Welsh from Latin tumulus) and Tombelaine (the Teutonic diminutive of Tumba) are probably derived from the prehistoric remains of which there is now no trace.

117. Les Noms des Saints bretons, p. 5.

118. Dan. x. 13, 21; xii. 1; Rev. xii. 7.

119. See appendix, p. 172.

120. Ibid., p. 173.

121. Norman Conquest, pp. 766, 767.

122. Genealogist, N.S., XVII, 2.

123. Chan. inq. p.m., 12 Edw. II, No 16.

124. De Banco, 12 Henry VI, Hilary, m. 443.

125. Oliver, Monasticon, p. 414.

126. Feudal Aids, 1303, 1306, etc.

127. Loth, Vie de Saint Samson, p. 15.

128. Anmaneth may be an Anglicised form of An-manegh (cf. Carnyorth and Respeth for Carnyorgh and Respegh), but it is more likely that Amaneth is an adjectival form, viz. ManÉghek or Menaghek, which became successively MenÉhek, Meneck, Menek, Meneage (cf. infra Trevanaek). I am indebted to Mr. Henry Jenner for this suggestion and for some other notes on the derivation of Cornish place-names.

129. See appendix, p. 175.

130. Duine, Saints de DomnonÉe, pp. 5-12.

131. “Vennesire” in the cartulary at Avranches.